How To Influence People Order Printed Copy

Author: John Maxwell
Size: 1.41MB | 239 pages
|

Download Read Online

Continue with

Google Twitter

Email Register

Others like how to influence people Features >>

How To Win Friends And Influence People

How To Live An Extraordinary Life

Making Good Habits, Breaking Bad Habits

About the Book

"How to Influence People" by John Maxwell provides practical advice on how to effectively influence and persuade others. Maxwell emphasizes the importance of relationships, authenticity, and empathy in building trust and influence with others. He offers strategies for developing influential communication skills and techniques for gaining influence in various personal and professional settings. Overall, the book serves as a guide for individuals seeking to enhance their ability to positively impact and inspire others.

James Petigru Boyce

James P. Boyce, Southern’s first president, was born on January 11, 1827 at Charleston, South Carolina. Boyce matriculated at Brown University in 1845. He quickly became a respected student and popular peer. Soon after entering Brown, Boyce professed his faith in Christ. Soon after his conversion, he fell in love at a friend’s wedding. Just two days after meeting Lizzie Ficklen, Boyce asked her to marry him. Taken aback, Lizzie rebuffed her suitor, but only for a time. The two wed in December 1848 and together raised two daughters. Boyce served as editor of the Southern Baptist after graduation. In 1849 he entered Princeton Theological Seminary, where he completed the three-year course in just two years. He then served as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Columbia, South Carolina until 1855, when he received an offer from South Carolina’s Furman University to join its faculty. He accepted and became a professor of theology in 1855. Though Boyce enjoyed teaching at Furman, he wanted to begin a Baptist seminary for southerners. He presented the initial educational philosophy for a theological school in his famous 1856 inaugural address on “Three Changes in Theological Education.” With the help of fellow Southern Baptists, Boyce brought his vision to life. Southern Seminary opened in Greenville in 1859. For almost thirty years, Boyce served as Southern’s de facto president, although his official title was chairman of the faculty. He did not take the title of president until 1888, a year before his passing. Throughout his career, Boyce proved himself a skilled fundraiser and administrator, equally able to produce a financial miracle and quell a fractious moment. In the midst of continual hardship, Boyce devoted his time and his finances to Southern, all while he taught classes, led a Sunday School class at Broadway Baptist Church, and served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention for seven consecutive terms from 1872 to 1879, and in 1888. He also found time to write a catechism and a book, Abstract of Systematic Theology. The book was used in systematic theology classes for many years. Boyce’s talent as an executive fostered much competition for his abilities. In 1868, the South Carolina Railway Company sought Boyce for its presidency, a position that promised a ten thousand dollar salary. Though this offer was extraordinarily attractive, Boyce declined it. Numerous colleges and universities also sought Boyce’s administrative gifts. In 1874, Boyce’s alma mater, Brown University, requested that he become its president, but he refused. He was thoroughly convinced that nothing he could do was more crucial to the gospel than his devoted service to the seminary. He had set his hand to the plow. Until death, he would not turn from his life’s work. Boyce labored long in Louisville until illness drove him to seek recovery in Europe in 1888. Though his heart lifted in a visit to Charles Spurgeon, his health did not improve. Southern’s first president passed away on December 28, 1888. His legacy lives on to this day through the seminary he devoted his life to establishing and preserving. Sources: John A. Broadus, Memoir of James P. Boyce, Nashville, TN: Sunday School Board, 1927. William Mueller, A History of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Nashville, TN: Broadman, 1959.

The Cross and the St. Louis Cardinals

What does Jonathan Edwards have to do with baseball? It relates to how he saw the world. The technical term is typology — the mechanism of his God-entranced vision of all things. He explains, God does purposely make and order one thing to be in agreeableness and harmony with another. And if so, why should not we suppose that he makes the inferior in imitation of the superior, the material of the spiritual, on purpose to have a resemblance and shadow of them? We see that even in the material world God makes one part of it strangely to agree with another; and why it is not reasonable to suppose he makes the whole as a shadow of the spiritual world? . . . ("Images of Diving Things," A Jonathan Edwards Reader, [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995], 16). Edwards saw it in the experience of walking down a hill, in the diet of ravens, and in the life of silkworms. And sports fans just saw it in the 2011 World Series. The World Series, Really? What made this Series so great wasn’t the mere fact that I love the St. Louis Cardinals and they won. It was the whole manner of how it happened. It's the fact that the Cardinals were trailing 10.5 games on August 25. They had no chance of making the playoffs, it seemed. It was the time to start looking at next year—the time when the "maybe-next-season" wishes are reluctantly announced. But then they started winning. Their late-season success allowed them to slip into the playoffs on the final game of the season. That was amazing enough. Then they beat the league-best Phillies. Then the potent Brewers. And then there they were—like out of no where—in the World Series. Learning from Edwards, let’s keep tracking the "agreeableness and harmony" that goes much deeper than America’s pastime. The Cardinals were the underdog, if there ever were one. They shouldn't even be in the playoffs, not to mention in the World Series competing against the repeat American League champion Texas Rangers. Every commentator wrote them off — "it was nice they made it this far, but they just aren’t championship caliber." Weakness Exposed When Texas won two in a row to take a 3-2 series lead, we expected that the Cards would finally fold. And during Game 6, when they came down to one out and one strike away from losing — twice! — hopes were dashed for Cardinal Nation. The consoling began, remembering the season really should have ended in September, that they really didn't have a World Series-quality team, that it's time again to start the "maybe next season" concessions. The team’s weakness at last was seen as weakness, and the dream of winning the World Series was confronted with the reality that things really don't happen this way. It was like a Friday afternoon wake-up call from Golgotha. But wait a minute. Isn’t this the way all the best stories go? Cue Edwards. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey, but it could have been a stallion leading an unbeatable legion of Jewish revolutionaries. He could have been taller, a handsome king that looked more like a Disney prince instead of a Galilean peasant. There could have been no agony, no cross, no tomb. There could have been, but there wasn’t. When Hope Seems Lost And this was God’s design — in his universe, there is more beauty when victory rises out of weakness. The morning shines brighter after a tumultuousness night. The glory is greater at the end of three silent days, when the Lamb has been slain, when all hope seems lost. That’s where this World Series was pointing. Game 6 made this clear. The Cardinals were finished. It was over. Over. Well, over until David Freese's two-run triple in the bottom of the 9th, then Berkman's RBI single in the 10th, then Freese's walk-off homer in the 11th. Almost too good to be true. Like an out-of-breath Mary flinging open the disciples’ door to announce an empty tomb. Then Game 7 came, and the Cards won that one, too. It was an unforgettable Series, one that reaches deep into the human soul, resonating with the imprint of our Creator and reminding us why the good stories are, well, so good. Article by Jonathan Parnell